I was in grade school on the south side of Chicago when I began listening to the radio. It was AM in those days, and the format was Top Forty. There were two big stations in Chicago, WLS and WCFL. Since they both played the same music, they differentiated themselves by the personalities of their disc jockeys. One did a lot of comedic bits and spotlighted local comedians. And one of those was Bob Newhart.
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In my two previous columns (here and here) I detailed some of the winners and losers resulting from the opinions issued during the Supreme Court term just ended. Now let us look at the biggest winner of them all, the Supreme Court itself. In the last three weeks of the term, the Supreme Court transferred much of regulatory and administrative authority and rulemaking to itself. The federal courts were not authorized and are not equipped to serve as roving regulators of last resort for hundreds of federal agencies. According to the Court:
Every summer professors at the nation’s law schools huddle to discuss what, if any, changes should be made to their teaching curriculum after the Supreme Court term just ended. This year, they are scrambling to deal with the train wreck for constitutional law that was the Court’s 2023-2024 term.
I am not a lawyer. But after fifty years as a journalist, I am spending my emeritus years in part teaching a course titled “Media Law and Ethics for Journalists” in the UCLA Extension program. This is a required course in the school’s journalism certificate program and is available online.
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The six members of the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court cast their ballots for Donald Trump on the last day of the court term, then ran out of town to begin their standard three months’ long vacation.
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It has become a tradition for me to write a series of blogs at the end of the Supreme Court term reviewing the major cases decided during the court year. I’m still working on this project, but it is not ready yet. Give me a few more days to digest the opinions the conservative supermajority dumped on the nation in the last few weeks. I find myself nearly overwhelmed by their blatant attempt to rewrite the Constitution and change our lives in ways I view with disgust and disappointment. I find it difficult to concentrate.
At times like these I like to think of better moments in the history of our great nation. We celebrate tomorrow our Independence Day, noting the date, actually July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress declared “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States….”
“The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epoch in the History of America,” Massachusetts delegate John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3. Adams, often prescient, vividly described the parades, “illuminations” and festivities he believed would be regular events, staged each year to note the occasion. We wound up celebrating the Fourth of July, the date of the signing of the final form of the declaration. But whatever the date the principal of the event was the delegates’ belief that a nation should rest not on the arbitrary rule of a single man and his hand-picked advisors, but on the rule of law.
Relax with your family. Celebrate your nation. Read something about our history. You can even watch the film of 1776, the Broadway musical based on that sizzling summer of 1776 in Philadelphia, when our nation was born. And reflect on what we are making of the legacy of the brave men who met and wrote the Declaration of Independence.
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There is no sugar-coating it. President Joe Biden had a train wreck in his first 2024 debate with Former President Donald Trump. Fifty-one million watched. I wrote that I had concerns because Biden had seemed physically feeble during some appearances in the last year. Right as he walked out on the debate stage, I saw those signs, Biden walking slowly and speaking slowly and in a soft scratchy voice. I did not expect to see him ramble and become incoherent, but he did that more than once. At other times he was clear, combative, and effective, defending his administration and listing his accomplishments. But you could not fail to notice the other moments.
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The chattering class had a field day over the weekend pontificating on the presidential debate scheduled for Thursday, June 27, at 9pm ET on CNN. As usual when the Know-It-Alls get together, there was a lot of noise but little substance. I never expected there would be any debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and I still have a thought that this event might be called off. If not, it should be quite a spectacle, more entertaining than reality TV.
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